Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/37

Rh Turkish fez. Standing in front of the cabinet, he drew from his girdle a long slender wand and tapped with it several times on the glass which protected the left-hand division of the cabinet. The light from the brazier, mingling with the red rays from a colored lamp depending by a chain from the ceiling, shone faintly into the interior of the cage, and revealed something moving there with a slow and stealthy motion. Gradually this object approached the glass and partly reared itself up against it. It displayed the head and glistening black neck of a magnificent cobra, its sides spotted with gold. The alchemist touched a pulley, and the glass rose upward like a window, leaving the front of the cage open.

He then retired three or four paces, keeping his eyes fixed upon the serpent, and crouched noiselessly down upon the carpet until he squatted upon his heels. Meanwhile, the cobra remained motionless in the cage, with its head lifted.

The alchemist now drew from the folds of his robe a short instrument of cylindrical shape, pierced with holes after the manner of a flute. It was made of ebony, and highly polished, and was decorated with bits of red coral and pendants of sparkling crystal. It was a toumril, brought from India, and used by the serpent-charmers in their incantations. Raising it to his lips, he drew from it soft and plaintive sounds, pleasing to the ear, yet differing in some essential respects from the music of the West. The sounds gradually grew louder, though never losing their soft, insinuating quality, until the vault of the chamber seemed to resound with echoes of soothing potency.

At the first notes the cobra had changed its position, turning its head towards the player. As the music continued, a slow continuous shifting was observable throughout its glistening coils: the forward part of its body was pushed beyond the edge of the cage, and held poised in the air, the head and neck still upright. Then the long, tapering form, still steadily uncoiling, sank towards the floor in sliding undulations, writhing rhythmically forward, in harmony with the sweet throbbing of the flute. As it rested, with its jet-black scales and golden spots, upon the dull red carpet, in the dim light,—or seemed to rest, for it was never still,—it was a beautiful yet terrible symbol of sensuous delight,—the subtile pleasure that bears within it the poison of death. Onward glided Sâprani, her lustrous sides tense with voluptuous longing, while the toumril warbled louder and louder, and the coral and crystal pendants sparkled red and white, and the player swung his body from side to side in the mystic rapture of the melody. And now Sâprani's head rose in the air, and her body coiled beneath, until half her sinuous grace was lifted above the floor, and waved to